History of Madness

Foucault’s first major work, published in France in 1961, has only now
become available in a complete English version. In it Foucault describes
the medicalisation of insanity in Early Modern France, arguing that
madness as a concept is socially embedded, not to be considered in
isolation from the technologies that have been put in place to control,
contain and treat it.

Peter Barham writes:

Readers who have to rely on an English translation have had to wait
almost four decades to get their hands on a complete version of Folie
et déraison. In important respects the new translation does not
disappoint: this is a much subtler, less sensationalist Foucault of 14
chapters as against nine, with numerous other missing sections added,
and a wealth of detail on a variety of topics, from the conflict
between a tragic and a critical understanding of madness in the
Renaissance, to the punishment of the venereally infected in the 17th
century (‘sufferers from venereal diseases will only be admitted after
correction has been carried out, and after they have been whipped’).
All this is strangely reassuring in the face of Foucault’s more
fantastic speculations and the broad sweep of his ambitious project.